Fly the Airplane: Staying Focused is the Key to High Performance.
I grew up with pilots. My grandfather flew Sopwith Camels in the first World War for the Canadian RAF. Camels had a top speed of about 110 mph and were made of canvas. My father had his private license. He was a great dad, a great “stick and rudder” pilot, but a questionable navigator. He was dead calm in most emergencies (except child-birth stuff, those freaked him out — he had seven kids). Flying with my mom to New York in a single-engine airplane (a Mooney), the engine quit, and he landed the plane in a pig pen in Indiana. It was awesome flying, but my mom never forgave him.
We lived by a small airport in Minnesota. I worked there, and when I was fifteen, I soloed. I later worked as a flight instructor and jack-of-all-trades pilot until I was in my forties. I did inherit some of my dad’s navigational challenges. It was common for me, at 29,000 feet, to wonder, “Where are we exactly?”
This deficit followed me to the fire department, where one year I was awarded a plaque, “Most likely to get lost going to a call.”
When I was a student pilot, one of my favorite books, dog-eared and underlined from reading it one hundred times, was Ernst Gann’s “Fate is the Hunter.” It is a coming of age story of a pilot when the airlines were just beginning, before GPS, autopilots, simulators, and jets.
(a footnote: It is unbelievable, insanely cool that in my lifetime we’ve gone from line of sight navigation, canvas airplanes to landing “Perseverance” on Mars.)
In those days, pilots were trained primarily on the job, starting as co-pilots.
The story is about one co-pilot who was close to being “signed-off” as a pilot. It was his last flight with his training Captain.
They were making a night approach in bad weather in a DC-3. The wings were covered with ice, it was turbulent, they were bouncing around, and the instruments were hard to read. It takes all your concentration to hand-fly an instrument approach and do the math in your head to stay on course and altitude.
The training pilot, a World War II veteran with thousands of hours of flying experience, then did the strangest thing. He took matches from his pocket (every pilot smoked back then), lit the match, and held it in front of the co-pilot’s face.
Annoyed, the co-pilot knocked it away. The pilot lit another match and did it again.
The co-pilot knocked it away again and swore at the pilot. But again, the pilot lit a match and held it in front of his face.
“What are you doing!?” the co-pilot finally exploded.
The pilot calmly replied, “Fly the airplane.”
Another match. Then another. The co-pilot struggled to keep his focus. Finally, they broke out of the clouds, saw the runway lights (still one of the most beautiful sights there is!), and landed.
Furious, the co-pilot wanted an explanation. The pilot calmly answered, “no matter what is happening, you have to fly the airplane — no matter the distractions.”
So, being an athlete.
When you are playing soccer, matches are constantly being lit in front of your face. The refs make calls (or don’t make calls) that we disagree with. The other team’s coach is yelling. Spectators are screaming. Your teammates aren’t doing what you want them to do. Your legs aren’t doing what you want them to do.
All distractions, lit matches held up in front of your face.
When we allow those distractions to take our focus, our playing suffers.
But the biggest distraction, especially for young athletes, is the voice in their head, what we call “Self-talk.” (Someone always reads this and says to themselves, “I don’t talk to myself!”)
Pause.
Get the joke.
In a game, that “self-talk” voice is like a sports-broadcaster narrating only the worst things you do: “That pass sucked! I’m so out of shape! Everyone is faster than me! The coach saw my mistake! The coach is going to bench me! We’re going to lose! We’re losers! We are slime-coated, horrible slugs! (okay, that last one is one of my specialties.)
As coaches, we KNOW this is going on. First, because we’ve been there, done that, heard the voices in our heads. Second, we can see it in your body language. Slumped shoulders after something goes wrong, sad faces, or all of a sudden you’re not cheering on your teammates: you’ve gone “dark.”
I’m not going to make the more significant point that managing our “self-talk” is crucial to any high-performance endeavor in life. (But it is!)
I’m not going to get technical because I don’t want to lose you, but there is another way.
There is lots and lots of research about a performance state called “flow.” (or “being in the Zone”).
You’ve all experienced it. When you are so into a game that you lose track of time, you’re energized and focused, and you DON’T NOTICE OR CARE that you made a mistake. You just flow with the experience of playing. Sometimes, we are just playing pick-up or at practice when the “stakes” are low.
The goal is to be able to take that experience and apply it to high-stakes events. (sports are great simulators for high stakes events)
So here is how to do it.
1. Focus on your breathing. Deep belly breathing is vital! Relax.
2. Challenge your “self-talk.” Remind yourself: 1) it’s just a game. My life is not threatened! 2)Focus on what you’ve done well. 3) focus on the game; your first touch, the sound of the ball being struck, and how amazing it is to be playing!
3. When something goes wrong (we get scored on), the key at that moment is to “bounce back.” -That moment is over. Nothing we can do about it, all we can do is focus on the “now.” In Zen practice, it’s called the “here, now, this.”
Like every skill, it takes practice, practice, practice.
I’ve had the flow experience several times. Playing pick-up soccer, writing, and at fires, on the Fire Department.
But my favorite and most memorable were flying instrument approaches.
They were all about precision. You’re excited yet relaxed. There is no space for thinking about anything else except flying the airplane. On the flight path, speed set, flaps 20%, over the middle marker, centered on the localizer, landing checklist, gear down, co-pilot calling out speeds and altitude. Fly the Airplane. Break out of clouds, see the runway lights. Landing-gear checked down. Full flaps. Fly the airplane. Screech as the tires kiss the runway. Flow.
High performance starts not with talent, or great touches, or ball skills. It begins with managing the mental game. It starts with being able to perform, be intense and relaxed, even when matches are being lit in front of us.
So take a few minutes and think about your “mental game.” Remember the times you’ve experienced “flow.” Let’s bring that to the game we love.
See you soon!
Hersch
